It has been a while – more than 4 months in fact – since my last post, and a lot has happened since then. Ondoy was followed by several other typhoons, and then strangely a dry spell due to El Nino. Down south, the culture of arrogance and violence in Philippine politics took a tragic, criminal turn when more than 50 people were assaulted, tortured, and massacred in Ampatuan, Maguindanao; Martial Law was subsequently declared under the pretext of a state of rebellion – the very Administration that helped to legitimize private militia through the issuance of EO 546, was supposedly surprised and caught unaware by the huge stockpiles of weaponry as well as the mobilization of heavily armed paramilitary groups more loyal to the Ampatuan Clan than to the People of the Republic of the Philippines. (Strange, it would seem, that the Administration should supposedly be so threatened by the Ampatuans when – even during the lead up to their eventual arrests – these people nonetheless hung a tarpaulin professing their love for the President.) The election campaign has, in the interim, also heated up, to the tune of hundreds of millions of Pesos – why we even saw a Tunay na Mahirap (Genuine Poor) end up spending more than Php 500 Million out of his own pocket on advertisements alone in a three-month span, during the last quarter of 2009 (good enough to land him in fourteenth place among the top advertisers for the same period – the only individual to place, it should be noted). Expensive or not, this wealthy poor boy’s ad splurge seems to have paid off handsomely as the current surveys now have him statistically tied with the erstwhile Presidentiable-to-beat.
The tech world has similarly been quite busy. CES 2010 happened in January and reinforced the notion that 2010 would be the year of the tablet. This theme was further hammered in when Apple finally unveiled the mythical Apple Tablet, now christened the iPad – with Steve Jobs personally presenting the device. Although the iPad won’t be available till March this year, its launch has apparently triggered a Ebook wars of sorts: Amazon and MacMillan had a spat shortly after the iPad’s launch as regards the current Kindle pricing scheme vs. the scheme to be implemented by Apple’s soon-to-be-launched iBook service – although this was eventually resolved, it lead to further trips to the negotiating table between Amazon and its publisher partners. (Charlie Stross wrote a piece comparing the system currently being used to distribute Kindle Ebooks and the one proposed by Apple, to be used in its iBook service.) That being said, the iPad hasn’t been a unanimous hit: according to one analysis of tweets regarding the iPad, around 50% were less than impressed with the device.
Fascination with shiny, new gadgets has also been a common theme in my own life. In the months since my last post I have bought for my own use a collection of geeky pleasures, some of which I hope to write about (if time permits) in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, these pictures will have to do:
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